David J Brooks wrote: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek > > Funny, sad, > > Dave >
Long rant. You've been warned. I think you may have missed the point, Dave. This is a jab at the unwashed masses who insist on using the internet. Having worked a variety of support jobs, from the lowly DSL help desk to supporting 15,000 internal and about 30,000 external users at a little multi-billion dollar mom-and-pop, I can say that there are people just like this. They want to know why the mouse cable comes out of the back instead of the front of the mouse. They call the monitor the computer, the computer the hard drive, and wonder why the CD tray won't close when they put the second disk in on top of the first. AOL users are by far the worst. Five or six years ago I worked for a very short time as a DSL support technician. We primarily talked people through the instructions that came with their self-install kits. This was a big eye-opener. A lot of people just didn't understand what DSL was. Most were really confused about using the phone and the internet at the same time. This is understandable, as it wasn't nearly as common then. But the frustrations arose from having to walk someone through the physical installation. Not only were they written in very plain English, they were illustrated. The folks at SBC claimed they had hired a firm to design instructions that could be followed by anyone with eyesight and two hands. No need to speak English. No need to be literate at all. Of course, their main concern was cutting back support costs. Still, we were busy. Here's a snippet from a conversation I had back then: Customer: I can't get this internet card in my computer. Me: A what? Customer: Internet card. Oh. I guess it says ethernet. Me: Not a problem. I can help you with that. Can you put the PC on a table or desk? Customer: It's already on the desk. Me: Is it unplugged? Him: Yep. Me: Ok. If you're facing the front of the PC, we need to remove the panel on the left. There are probably some screws along the left rear edge. Can you back those out? He wanders off to get a screw driver, complains about how hard this is, manages to wrestle the panel off, complains about the PC manufacturer, and then can't find the PCI slot. Me: It's white. The card only fits in one way. Him: Nope. We go on like this for quite some time, me spilling more and more detail about the location appearance of the slot, and him telling me he can't find it. Finally, I ask him what he does see. Him: The back of the picture tube. Me: That's odd. Tell you what. Don't touch anything in there and just put the panel back on. I'll send out a technician. No charge. The fault here was entirely mine. I assumed that because this guy had a PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse that he knew what they were called. Silly me. After all, that thing you steer your car with is known by many names, right? Isn't it? Grrrr. -- Scott Loveless http://www.twosixteen.com/fivetoedsloth/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
